More than seven months after a state-sanctioned deadline to pay a $76,000 fine, Walker County leaders have not cut the check.
Bert Langley, director of compliance for the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, said his department is still waiting for Walker County to pay a penalty for missing a 2014 deadline to fix damage to a creek. The county was supposed to pay the fine by July 16, according to a consent order from EPD Director Judson Turner.
"I received a letter saying we were 76 days late and at a $1,000-a-day penalty, meaning we owed $76,000," Walker County Commissioner Bebe Heiskell reported last week. "I wrote Mr. Turner a letter back. We had our international P.E.-certified engineer that was with them when they did the work, and he turned it in saying we were 40 days early. So I'm challenging this 76 days. I don't know where they get it, and I sent the letter to [Turner] and I haven't heard back. I'll be glad to have a meeting with him anytime, but I'm waiting for a response from him."
Langley, who helped investigate the environmental damage, said the matter "is being handled strictly through our director's office at this point.
"I can't say the 'why,' 'what' or 'how' of what's going on," he said.
Turner and EPD spokesman Kevin Chambers did not return requests seeking comment.
The EPD began investigating Walker County in March 2012, when a woman living on Lookout Mountain told the agency county employees poured dirt into Rock Creek while building the Durham Trail hiking route. Members of the EPD found the county was, in fact, working near a trout stream without required approval from the environmental agency.
Langley told the Times Free Press in 2014 the dirt threatens the ecosystem by creating a mud bottom, killing the phytoplankton and invertebrates that trout eat. EPD investigators also found the county rerouted the path the trout take through the creek, and the fish struggled to swim upstream during mating season.
"There's no trout to kill [in Rock Creek]," Heiskell said when questioned about the incident last week. "A biologist at Cahutta Hatchery, they're the ones that hatch the fish and put them in. There's charts all over the place showing where wild trout are and there's none in here. There's some down in Chattooga County, but most are in Northeast Georgia. There never have been any."
In September 2012, six months after the EPD began investigating the issue, the agency fined Walker County $65,000. It also told Heiskell the county needed to fix the problem it had created, so she decided to build a pedestrian bridge over the creek, allowing hikers to walk past the water without kicking in more dirt.
As part of the agreement, the county needed to finish the project by Sept. 11, 2014. If it did not, it would face an additional $1,000-per-day fine. Ultimately, workers finished the bridge and some other parts of the creek's rehabilitation in February 2015, 150 days after deadline.
Turner decided to fine Walker County $76,000 instead of the potential full amount. Though Turner has not told the Times Free Press why the EPD's fine was lower than a $1,000-per-day penalty, Langley said last year that he believes the decision considers weather problems: The EPD did not punish the county for days when the rain or snow was too strong to work.
"Walker County is confident that EPD and its parent agency, Georgia [Department of Natural Resources], will be fair and reasonable as we negotiate the differences that have surfaced in the time calculation," Heiskell told the Times Free Press in June of last year. "We look forward to meeting with EPD/DNR and resolving the issue."
Not including the $76,000 fine, the county's construction of Durham Trail cost more than it expected. In 2007, according to public records, the county planned to build the trail for $200,000 - half of it covered by a state grant.
Instead, as of March 2015, records show the county spent $540,000 on the trail, with grants covering $40,000.